


And How the Sky Gets Heavy

by Rainbowcat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2014!verse, Angst, End!verse, Episode: s05e04 The End, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 00:57:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainbowcat/pseuds/Rainbowcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At daytime, Dean and Castiel avoid each other. At nighttime, it changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And How the Sky Gets Heavy

At daytime, Dean and Castiel avoid each other.

Dean’s always busy staving off the true end of the world. He fights against the moment when no sane person will be left to fight by his side and he can’t avoid the virus anymore. He conducts raids, gives orders, shoots Croats, and listens to Chuck stammer about their lack of supplies. He finds weapons, teaches children how to aim and fire, hunts and hunts and hunts for the Colt. Castiel has found other ways to occupy his time. The fallen angel only comes along on raids to find himself more drugs, moving with deliberate slowness through the aisles of abandoned pharmacies. Otherwise, Cas stays to his little hut, welcoming in beautiful and broken young women, popping pills. Dean learned long ago that he would be unable to shake his old friend from this lifestyle. Resigned to the fact of his inevitable death, Castiel buries reality as best as he can. Dean can’t find it in himself to place blame, so he lets him.

At nighttime, it changes.

Dean has sex with whichever woman may show up at his doorstep that evening, and once she’s sound asleep beside him, slips outside. He closes the door quietly and sets off into the darkness. The moon shines only halfheartedly overhead, as though it, too, has forsaken this bedeviled planet. Every night, his feet carry him automatically past rows of cold houses and deserted streets. It’s not safe outside anymore, especially in the dark, but Dean prowls on nonetheless. 

Then he’s at Castiel’s door and he’s inside, and Castiel is there, waiting. He sits upright on the bed. Dean takes his place beside him, breathing in scents clinging to the blankets: sweat and smoke and semen.

Sometimes Dean cries. It’s quiet but it’s free, and Castiel puts a warm hand on Dean’s knee while he breaks and breaks and breaks. Sometimes Dean plays with a gun. Sometimes it’s a knife. He traces the tip of the blade ever-so-lightly over his wrists and temples. He never breaks the skin, and Castiel watches wordlessly the whole time, coming down from whatever high he’s been on. Dean contemplates his weapons and their implications, then puts them down and swallows away the lump in his throat. He stands and leaves to use Castiel’s shower.

When Dean returns, Cas is lying on the bed. Dean drops his towel and crawls on top of him, tugging off Cas’s shirt. Their sex is slower than what either of them have with others, yet it’s rawer, more desperate. Dean’s fingers find purchase in Castiel’s hair and pull. Teeth clash, lips tangle: Dean tongues along Cas’s jawline, bites into his neck and collarbone. Cas never makes any effort to hide the dark welts that result. And the ex-angel breathes heavily beneath Dean, letting him do whatever he wants and needs; Castiel rubs wide circles into Dean’s back, murmuring quietly into the shell of his ear. In each other’s arms, they find that which they miss most. To Dean, it’s acceptance and comfort and a bleak hint of serenity. To Castiel, it’s the closest thing to having his wings back. And through it all, they don’t close their eyes, they don’t take their gazes off the other's face. Dean shudders, and it almost hurts when he comes. Cas presses burning lips into his hair and climaxes, too.

It’s always cold outside, the frost pervading every inch of the hut, icy enough that they don’t bother emerging from the blankets to clean themselves up. Dean turns to the side and Castiel curls up at his back, draping one arm over his waist. When nightmares startle Dean awake, he pulls Cas tighter and blinks away the images of Sam seared into his subconscious.

This is the only way he sleeps anymore.

Just before dawn, Dean wakes again and nudges Castiel awake. They kiss hungrily; when Dean finally leaves the bed, he does so without a backward glance and without wiping his swollen lips. He dresses and slinks away before the sun is fully risen.

And Castiel scrubs a hand over his face, his stomach hollow, reaching for the bottle of pills on a table beside the bed.

Every morning Dean thinks to himself that this is the day he dies. And every night he returns to the same weary doorstep.

The others see Dean leaving Castiel’s hut; they see and they know and they keep their heads down. Dean never brings it up so why should they, why would they? When Dean scowls and loads his weapons and barks commands, why would they? When they see Castiel spread-eagled on his carpeted floor, nearly comatose save for the occasional twitch of his head, why would they?

Why would they, when it takes a broken angel to piece together a broken man?

**Author's Note:**

> Because this fandom really needed another end!verse fic... my contribution to this massive universe. I wrote this several months ago, so it's no longer faithful to my own rapidly evolving headcanon, but I figured I would post it anyway.
> 
> The title is a lyric from Macklemore's Otherside: "And how the sky gets heavy when you are underneath it...."


End file.
